More Quests

There’s nothing left for Shannon in the tomb. Her adventure mini-window is now giving her that special button, now labeled “Deliver Briefing.” It’s only just before 3:00pm, so we’ve still got plenty of time. I click it, and Shannon finds her way out and to Nabila. She cashes in her quest, then receives another one to talk to one of Nabila’s employees, named Raffi.

In the interest of not wanting to spoil anything, we won’t give you anymore walkthroughs of tombs. You may see a surprise or two here or there, but remember that the solution to almost every room lies in the room itself. If you come to a door that requires a keystone but you can’t find it, you may want to buy a Skeleton Keystone from the market vendors. It’s probably good to have a couple of them on you at all times when you’re doing some serious tomb raiding.

That said, the next quest Shannon gets is to help Raffi find four pieces of turquoise. You don’t get mining tools: this is a perennial fetch quest! And unlike the previous quest, the yellow dot in map view doesn’t help you very much because it just points to Raffi. However, going into map view does present Shannon with a few light-blue dots with gem icons. These mark the exact location of the turquoise in question, which has spawned in just for her. She collects two… scans the map… and doesn’t find any more!

When you get a fetch quest, the item you look for spawns in at a few possible locations each day. Shannon picks up the two she can see now, but can’t do any more for today. This isn’t a big deal, really: it’s getting late, and Shannon doesn’t want to be in the middle of nowhere when night falls. After pocketing her two pieces of turquoise, she goes to the market to buy a couple souvenirs (hey, it was a Want, and I went ahead and spoiled her!), then retreats to the Base Camp to eat, hit the bathroom, shower, and sleep.

The nice thing about these quests is that their progress saves to Sims regardless of what else they’re doing. Even if Shannon’s vacation were to end after a single day, then the next time she arrives in Egypt, she can pick up right where she left off in the current adventure. Don’t ever feel pressured to get something done… unless you really just want to finish the quest before returning home! You can view your current task in the Opportunities Pane of the interface.

The next morning, Shannon wakes up early. She makes sure all her meters are topped off, then looks at map view. Lo and behold, a couple more turquoise pieces have spawned in! She hurries to collect them, then cashes in her quest. Her next one is easy to describe but time-consuming in execution: she needs to ask some villagers’ opinions of the mysterious company wanting to take over Egypt, but she can’t just pop the question out immediately. Shannon needs to make friends with a villager—or at least be somewhat friendly, about 10% of the relationship meter—then ask the question. She needs to do this to three different Sims to continue.

One of the best ways you can get on a local’s good side is to learn one of the local songs. This is done by using the “Learn Song…” social interaction. Each locale has two songs to learn; they’re singing songs, so you don’t need any Guitar Skill or anything to learn them. Once Shannon knows them, she starts singing them to other locals with the “Sing…” social interaction, and sometimes she’ll sing them to herself for no reason. Singing to others won’t fill the relationship meter instantly or anything, but it makes for a good icebreaker.

Shannon isn’t very sociable, so this part of this quest line takes all day. If she was more sociable, this would have gone a lot faster, but unfortunately, she has zero Charisma Skill. Adventurers should have a good variety of skills when they adventure, just to make things easier and quicker, though it’s by no means a requirement. I’ll have her work on that when she goes home.

Once she’s done with it, she’s tasked to explore another tomb. When she arrives at the tomb, which is a pyramid this time around, she is immediately blocked by a door. She can interact with the door with an “Inspect” command, which opens it up after a short animation. Sometimes these doors will remain closed; some doors only open if the current Sim actually has a quest for it, and others need items placed on nearby pedestals. Because Shannon has a quest here, the door opens for her.

Again, we won’t do a complete walkthrough of it, but Shannon does see something in the first room that she hasn’t seen before…

Clearly, there is some sort of pressure plate under this pile of rubble. She interacts with the rubble with a “Clear” command, pulls a pickaxe out of nowhere, and smacks the rubble until it dissipates. This gives her access to a switch, but…

Looking at her watch, she only has about 8 hours left on her vacation. A keystone tablet by a different door is glowing blue. This indicates that it’s this tablet, and the adjacent door, that is the next step on her quest. Although she will probably see more loot by going for the pressure plate under the rubble, she wants to try to clear this tomb before being deported from Egypt. Ergo, she uses her keystone on the tablet, then continues.

In the next room, she encounters some holes in the ground in a hall linking to the next room. She uses an “Inspect” command, and learns that this is a fire trap!

She has options here. If she had a high Logic Skill, Shannon could disarm the trap with a command. Well, she can attempt to disarm it anyway, but it wouldn’t turn out so well! She can also try to cross it and hope that her skin doesn’t turn into a rotting flaming mass immediately, but it’s pretty dangerous.

Shannon spots a pool nearby and has an idea. She interacts with it with a “Get Soaked” command. This causes her to drip incessantly. She then interacts with the fire trap and uses the “Attempt To Cross” command. Ironically, the trap doesn’t even sense her movements; this has to do with her high level of Athletic Skill also. (Sneaking around Sims’ homes as a thief probably helps her sneak across traps, too!)

On the other side of the trap is a locked door, as well as another pool. There is no other switch in the room, so she uses an “Explore” command on the pool. Shortly after swimming around, she finds a switch under the water. She trips it, and moves on.

Now, disarming traps or trying to cross them are not your only options. Shannon presently comes to a trap with a statue in front of it. She pushes the statue onto the trap, and immediately, the trap breaks and becomes dormant. If you can ever see a statue near a trap, break it this way, and you’ll never have to worry about it again!

Shannon continues through the tomb and gets her objective, five harvest flame fruits. However, just as she collects the last one, time runs out. She is ejected from the tomb and from the country, sadly… She never got to turn in her quest! Luckily, as we stated before, progress on this quest saves along with her. Unless she gets rid of her fruits, she can just immediately turn them back in once she’s back in Egypt.